Member Avatar for fallout4player

so I had quite a few word docs open. (about 10)
and a lot of folders open and google chrome, task manager ect.
and when I opened one more word doc the screen went black for about 5 seconds. it went back to normal then closed everything and shut it down. was this because my cpu couldn't handle it? will it happen again if I have that many things open? hardware or software problem?

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The symptoms described by — many Word docs, lots of Explorer windows, Chrome and Task Manager open, then a brief black screen followed by everything closing and a shutdown — point to a small set of likely causes rather than a single obvious one. As noted, memory pressure and heavy paging are a common cause of hangs with that workload, but the transient black screen plus an actual shutdown also fits a display/driver crash, a kernel-level fault, or a thermal/power trip.

A practical troubleshooting sequence:

  • Check Windows logs: run eventvwr.msc and inspect Windows Logs → System (and Application) at the event time for entries such as Kernel‑Power (ID 41), BugCheck, or display/driver errors. Use Reliability Monitor for a quick timeline.
  • Watch resource behavior while reproducing the load: Task Manager → Performance and Resource Monitor (resmon) for physical memory, Commit/Commit Limit, and hard faults/sec (many hard faults = heavy paging). Confirm free space on the system drive so the pagefile can grow.
  • Rule out bad RAM and drives: run mdsched.exe (Windows Memory Diagnostic) and, if warranted, a full MemTest86 boot pass. Check disk health/SMART and run chkdsk if corruption is suspected.
  • Check drivers and hardware: update GPU/chipset drivers and Windows. Monitor CPU/GPU temps (BIOS or a HW monitor) — sustained high temps can force shutdowns. For desktops, consider PSU health if shutdowns are abrupt.

Short-term mitigations: set virtual memory to system-managed, reduce Chrome tabs or the number of open documents, free disk space, and test with one RAM stick at a time if instability continues. If logs show driver or bugcheck entries, focus on driver reinstall and crash-dump analysis; if logs show thermal or power events, focus on cooling and PSU/battery.

Member Avatar for rubberman

You probably ran out of RAM and don't have adequate swap space configured. Check memory usage, and increase swap space. The system will run slower as the swap file is in use, but it should run. If it continues to happen in much the same way, then you may have a bad RAM chip.

commented: yes, maybe. but im pretty sure that i wasnt short of ram. i have 8gb of ddr3 runing at 1333mhz +1
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